Qantas CEO: Vaccines Will Be Mandatory For International Travel

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce says international travel likely won’t be able to get back to normal without compulsory vaccinations, a report from 9Now says.

Speaking with “A Current Affair” host Tracy Grimshaw, Joyce said the company would be changing its rules once a vaccine became widely available — and he thought other airlines around the world would likely do so as well.

“For international travelers … we will ask people to have a vaccination before they get on the aircraft,” he said, according to the report. “Certainly, for international visitors coming out and people leaving the country we think that’s a necessity.”

Joyce said he hoped to establish connections with countries including Singapore and Japan for flights if possible, and flights to and from Europe and the U.S. would need more testing and consideration for now.

He also spoke of the conditions in Australia, adding that the number of flights from Sydney to Melbourne was increasing after months of extreme limitations.

He said that would aid people in visiting their families over the holiday. By Christmas, Joyce is hoping to get back to 60 percent of what it had been prior to the pandemic. Also at that time, he hopes to get back 1,000 jobs that were lost to layoffs at the start of the pandemic, 9Now reports.

“If we can get Melbourne and Sydney back to where it was pre-COVID that will be 3000 people that didn’t have a role, were stood down, were working at Woolworths, somewhere else that are working for the airline again,” he said, according to the report.

In the face of increased COVID-19 cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently issued an advisory urging Americans not to travel for the Thanksgiving holiday this week.

But many Americans are still hesitant about traveling at all — when respondents to a survey were asked what it would take to return to normal life, one of the top responses was that a vaccine would be the strongest sign things were OK again.